Barbara Ballard

Mobile Internet sites are not as easy to use as their computer-targeted Web-site cousins, due to smaller screens, more difficult text input, and a wide variety of user situations. Despite these factors, industry experts agree that mobile access to Web sites needs to be more usable than computer access. Although there are many resources from browser manufacturers, carriers, and industry organizations available to achieve this (see design reources at the end of the article), severe design mistakes continue to be made. An unusable site can prevent users from being able to perform their tasks. A salesperson might simply call the main office to have somebody else do order entry if it's not simple to carry out on the mobile device. A consumer might decide that there is no us... (more)

Write Thrice, Run Anywhere

The explosion of devices, markup languages, and platforms in the mobile application arena has developers pulling their hair out. Trying to have a separate application for every language is hard enough - but even then, the application still needs to be optimized for different devices. Developing and maintaining multiple applications typically becomes extremely costly...and still ends up r... (more)

Java ME Is Dead, Long Live Java ME

In this "year of the mobile web" where pundits everywhere are talking about how "the web is the platform" .... In this time of "let's get a good enough browser and then mobile will take off" ... In this time of "Java ME is dead" ... 4 of our 6 first quarter projects have major components in Java ME. These are new applications, from companies who understand the porting issues and the com... (more)